This past Friday I saw the Maze Runner with some of my friends. One thing I can definitely say about Maze Runner was that it was way better than the Hunger Games. The Maze Runner book was good, but the movie really brought it to life. The people who made the film used a lot of dark lighting to give it some extra suspense. They used a variety of shots to help the clueless viewers, like myself, focus on the important parts of the movie. Another thing about this film was that its graphics and special effects were phenomenal! I don't want to give anything away for those of you who want to watch it, but I will say that it was aMAZEing... HAHAHA get it?Fun Facts: Did you know that the Maze Runner was originally scheduled to come out on February 14, 2014, but was pushed back to September 19, 2014. They are currently filming the sequel to the Maze Runner called "The Scorch Trials". It sounds pretty cool right? It gets cooler, the sequel will be released on September 18, 2015 in theaters.

This week's blog has to do with"dealing with stress". I know most of us had to deal with some sort of stress at sometime in our lives. I've had many experiences with stress. I've had the stress of breaking my arm twice, having to give up gymnastics, meeting my deadlines for school, and having my brother in college. When I broke my arm, i was stressed because of the pain and riding the ambulance for 2 hours to the hospital in pain and not knowing what was going to happen to me as I laid helpless in the ambulance. I also was under a lot of stress thinking about what I would not be able to do again. I had high hopes of continuing my gymnastics, but later was told that I would have to give it up. Having to give up gymnastics made me feel very "monstoppulous". (haha... wondering what that word means?). I handled this stress, but watching TV with my brother while I awaited my surgery date and healed in Oregon. I mean I watched TV ALLLLLL DAAAYYY... because I was not able to move around. When I healed, I started to draw and it helped to exercise my mind and my muscles in my arm. I deal with the stress of meeting my deadlines for school, particularly Media, by talking to my friends about random things to get my mind off of my stress. I also take deep breaths to relax my body and have an open mind so I can concentrate better on my work. My most recent stress I had to deal with is leaving my brother in college in Oregon. It was stressful because he is not home with me anymore to watch over me when we are home alone. He use to cook saimin and take care of me when we were home. Now I have to cook my own and do all his chores too! I deal with this stress by texting or calling him once in awhile to tell him how my day is going and to see how he is doing. It is nice to hear from him. Luckily, he will be coming home to spend the holidays with us. I am looking forward to the day he returns. Before I broke my arm, gymnastics use to be my stress reliever because I could just take my stress out in my flips. Now I have not turned to TV as much as I use to, instead I read more to ease my mind. I also turn to drawing, taking deep breaths, and talking my stress out to my family and friends. I know there aremore stress to come, but I've found ways to handle it.

This weeks blog is about my project. I did one last week, however, this time it's going to be a little more indepth. Taylor and I are doing our project on the Kalalau Trail. Our project has been selected to be in Hiki No so that means major adjustments. Trying to meet our due dates are making me crazy right now. Yesterday Taylor and I went out to shoot b-roll at the north shore and scripts are done! I'd say that we are working at a 90mph pace because I want this project to be the best and tell it the best by having Mr. M and Hiki No go through it. The reason why our due dates are crazy is because the fire fighters requested to view the video before I turn it in to Mr. M or Hiki No. Mr. M also wanted my script revised and turned in again to give to Hiki No and make corrections. So my due dates are all over the place. Actually, my rought cut should already be done. Mr. M said that it would be good if we got some interviews of the hikers coming of the trail. So yesterday Taylor and I went to the north shore to hike a little of the Kalalau trail and take b-roll of the trip and the hikers. We luckily got 9 interviews of hikers that came from all over the world/ US. There were 2 of our interviews were from Holland, Europe and one from Canada. The script went back and forward between Mr. M and I and I think I finally got it. I'm just waiting for the script to be revised so I am starting on the editing process. I have to get the rough cut to Mr. M so that he can send it to Hiki No. That's how our project has been so far. I'm hoping I make this video in time to give it to the firefighters and Hiki No. Wish us luck! BYE!!!

Hey, if you haven't heard yet, our media class has gotten 24 new Macbook Pros that were donated to help us with our media program. You're probably wondering "Who would donate 24 laptops to a media class?". Well, Uncle Toyo and his "big heart" has been a huge supporter of education for many Hawaii schools and the mainland schools. He was kind enough to visit our class on Wednesday and view the Hiki No awards with us. Although, we didn't win any awards, it was so cool to meet him in person and thank him. All of the students and some parents wrote a thank you letter to him to show our gratitude. The picture above is of our class with the laptops that we received from Uncle Toyo. Thank you Uncle Toyo!! I personally love my laptop because it's helpful and allows me to take my projects home. I don't think there has been a day yet when I didn't need to take my laptop home.

HEY! So we submitted our project script last week Saturday. Mr. M got back to me on Monday and told me that Hiki No really wants it, but not from the point of view that we did it on. Hiki No said that they want a personal view of the firefighters life and challenges. So I called the interviewers back and rescheduled for This coming Monday. Also Mr. M wants a wife of a firefighters perspective so yesterday we interviewed the captain's wife and got some really good things from her with a little emotion. I'm super excited to see how it turns out! Wish us Luck!!!

Dear Uncle Toyo, Thank you so much for the AMAZING donation! Having new laptops for our media class is like a dream come true! With these laptops we can now do our projects on them for the whole year. Also we are now able spend more time on our radios in class and at home. We are able to adapt to Final Cut Pro X. Thank you for your support and donations. You have relieved a lot of stress. Last year we only had 8 laptops and we would have to share them every Quarter. This was frustrating because we would have to choose who get the laptop next by doing these mini lottery drawings. If you did not win a laptop for the quarter you would have to use a desktop computer. The down side to having the desktop is that when the project deadline comes you can't work on it at home. There for, you can only work on the project for a certain amount of time to finish your final product. So these laptops will make doing our projects much easier by being able to bring these laptops home to work on our project. Mr. Matsunaga has downloaded an application called Audacity which is what we use for our radios. Like I said before we only had a limited amount of laptops and only one laptop was dedicated to the radios. That was very inconvenient because only one group can do radios at a time, but with our own computers we are allowed to do our radios whenever we want to. Finally, with these faster laptops we are now able to upgrade to Final Cut Pro X. Also, faster laptops allow us to render and export our video projects quicker, which is an advantage when competing at the annual STN National Convention. With these laptops it's like Christmas came early for all of us. I am positive that this laptop will help us succeed in media. Thank you again so much. Words cannot express how grateful we are. We will take care of them as if they were our own. I appreciate all the support you have given our media class all these years. With your generous donation we are now able take home our media projects and radios and produce higher quality products for Mr. M. With gratitude, Kelli Okayama, 8th grade

I was looking through the finalcutking channel and this caught my eye. The video is about the holographic iWatch. I really like this video because it has holograms and it's something I want to be able to do one day. I also like how it's so realistic and it's super believable. On the top is the video I saw and below is the behind the scenes work of the iWatch. IT'S SO COOL!!!! YOU'VE GOT TO CHECK IT OUT!!!Leave a comment and tell me how you like it.

Hey we have been back doing our school announcements with the leadership group. We now called it CKTV News instead of CKTV Morning Announcements because of our new schedule. This makes us do our announcements at lunch, so we had to make some adjustments. I missed my week of doing the announcements, but I did do my share on the first week of school. I was working camera b and the beginners were observing. For those of you that don't know what are the morning announcements, it's basically a way of letting the students and teachers know what's going on in our school. We are partners with the leadership group. Leadership goes to find the information that will be announced on the air and we, the media group, do the technical portion This new schedule has changed our advisory to the middle of the day. Why? I don't know, but this makes us have to record the announcements. We record it because the schedule splits up our lunch into two advisories. Since we do the announcements during advisory we would have to work two times with no lunch. To avoid that situation we have to record the first show and replay it for the next advisory. This is bad because if you accidentally mess up you can't redo it and the mistake is replayed again. The change in our schedule did affect our name and set up of the morning announcements. It affected the name because it used to be called CKTV Morning Announcements, but since it isn't in the morning we had to change it to CKTV News. By changing the name we have to change the titles, since all of them said "CKTV Morning Announcements". Like I said the first week of school I worked the morning announcements. For the first week the beginners were just observing and watching the jobs. It was nice having the beginners watch and learn the jobs. I showed some of the newbies the important parts of jobs. This is how the morning announcements have been so far. It felt good to be back doing morning announcements. This coming week I get to be the one that does the titles. YAY!!!